


A Silent World

by magicofthepen



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Multi, Post-Audio 04.03 Annihilation, Sharing a Bed, ish, narvin isn't in this but he's mentioned a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27745393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicofthepen/pseuds/magicofthepen
Summary: Not sleeping is a common problem on the Axis.
Relationships: Leela/Narvin/Romana II, Leela/Romana II
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	A Silent World

The Axis is a quiet place.

Since the vampire world, that quiet has rooted down inside Leela, leaving her more restless than ever. This is a nothing place — there is no idle chatter or skittering of wildlife scrabbling at the edge of her hearing. As stiff as Gallifrey’s Citadel had been, at least even that world existed beyond a narrow stretch of rooms and corridors. There were people, walking and arguing and eating and breathing and _living_ , people she would never meet, would never even know existed. Even on that last Axis world, surrounded by so much death, she could still, with her freshly sharp eyes and keen ears, know that life survived — from the open air above to deep down into the soil. The silent absence of that outer world here — it feels like she’s trapped in a cage, pacing and pacing. 

Maybe that’s why, after too much time spent staring at her ceiling, she went wandering to find some food to eat (or what passes as food around here). Maybe that is why she has barely slept in days. 

Stuffing the last bites of bland nutrient bar into her mouth, Leela leaves the sparse, white room that is the closest thing they have to a kitchen on the Axis. It itches at her, that even with her sight restored, there isn’t much worth looking at here. The Axis is too dull and too strange at the same time — it’s central rooms are never colorful or decorated, but they do blur around the edges sometimes. Like a reminder that this place isn’t real, exactly. That it is only a temporary stop between worlds.

Temporary. That’s what Romana keeps saying. Leela tries to believe her.

Leela should return to her room, but instead her footsteps lead her towards the medbay, a place she’s visited often these past few days. The medical supplies they have here are decent, but not that advanced. As Romana explained, although Narvin’s Gallifreyan biology will still allow him to heal from his injuries faster than any human, the lack of regeneration energy in his system will slow down the process. So for now Narvin has remained resting, mostly complaining that he can _walk_ and he doesn’t need to be _coddled_ , he’s perfectly _fine_. Leela indulges his groaning, startled to realize that somewhere along the line it had become endearing rather than annoying. He still looks at her like he doesn’t know _why_ she’s bothering to spend her free time running through her exercises next to his cot or teasing him about the exceedingly _boring_ books he’s decided to read for entertainment, since Romana insisted that she could handle managing the Axis systems alone. But over the past few days, over all the moments they’ve shared during and after their visit to the world of vampires and hounds, the flickering uncertainty in his eyes is fading. If Leela didn’t know better, she would say Narvin has actually begun to relax when she visits him. 

It is late at night, or what passes for night here on this world with no suns and moons. The lights flicker low, and Leela moves softly down the hall, unsure if Narvin is still awake. As she passes the doors that lead to each of their rooms, she’s surprised that Romana’s light is off — every night Leela has gone to sleep, Romana has remained awake, still huddled in her room. She insists that she’s working on analyzing potential portals, but it feels too much like her retreat after Brax’s disappearance. It feels like she is hiding. 

There are only so many common spaces on the Axis, and Leela hasn’t run into Romana on her late night walk so far. A suspicion gnaws inside her as she continues her path to the medbay.

The lights are off in the room, but the automatic door was left partially open. Even before she steps inside, Leela can see Romana caught in the light from the hall, arms hugged around her stomach, her jaw stiff. Leela taps lightly on the doorframe to alert Romana to her presence and squeezes through the gap in the doorway into the room.

“Is everything alright?”

Romana tenses as Leela appears, her eyes flickering between the door and the shadowed figure on the cot. She presses a finger to her lips and gives a slight, tentative nod. 

Leela exhales at the confirmation that Narvin’s condition hasn’t worsened before turning her gaze more fully to Romana. The way she shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking strangely guilty at being found here, half-hidden in the dark. The quiet misery that was so openly visible on her face before Leela had knocked and Romana tried to mask her expression. Leela’s heart twinges in mixed sympathy and exasperation. 

“I should go,” Romana mutters. 

Leela lets her pass through the open door, but instead of lingering in the medbay as Romana expects she will, she follows Romana back out into the hall and lets the door hiss shut behind them. 

Romana turns. “I thought you were…”

“Narvin is asleep. I only wanted to check, to know that nothing had changed.”

“Ah. Well then. I’ll see you in the morning.” Washed in the bright lights of the hall, the lines of exhaustion around Romana’s eyes are shockingly visible. As she starts to turn away, Leela catches her elbow.

“Is that the first time you have visited Narvin since he was injured?”

“What? No, I…Leela, you were _there_. Two days ago, we all discussed waiting on exploring another Axis world until he was fully recovered.”

“I _meant_ , without me.”

Romana tugs her lower lip between her teeth. Her eyes are staring at a point just past Leela’s head. “I’ve visited.”

“Really? Because Narvin says he has seen you as much as I have, and since you have been hiding away in your room again, I assumed you had not left it to see him either.”

“I haven’t been _hiding_.” Romana crosses her arms, the flash of anger pushing her to finally look at Leela properly. “And I’ve…” She swallows sharply, shoulders slumping. “Not while he was awake.”

“Why not?”

“Leela — ”

“Narvin is your _friend_. You care about his well-being, just as he cares about yours. There is no shame in spending time with your friends.” Her voice is too sharp.

Romana’s eyes drop again to her feet. “I’m not ignoring you Leela, either of you. I only…”

Leela rests a hand on Romana’s arm. “Why are you afraid of, that you’re hiding yourself away?”

“I’m not afraid.” Her voice is impossibly small, and she clears her throat as if to regain her confidence. 

“You are not a good liar either.”

Romana pulls away, tucking her arms back around herself, blinking too hard. But it has been too many days, and Leela is tired of ignoring Romana’s obvious exhaustion and the fresh pain in her eyes ever since they escaped the last Axis world. She watched Romana cradle Narvin as he heaved for breath, his blood staining both of their clothes; she saw the panic Romana couldn’t fully bring herself to voice. She understood it because that same terror was shattering her inside, in those long moments when they didn’t know if Narvin could survive the time it took for the portal to the Axis to reach them. 

“Narvin is hurting. He needs you.”

Romana shakes her head. “I doubt anyone would claim my bedside manner is particularly helpful. I’m sure he’s much happier to have you visit.”

Leela sighs. “He thinks you are angry with him.”

“I’m not _angry_ with him,” Romana mutters. And then, almost as an afterthought. “He told you that?”

Leela nearly laughs. Narvin isn’t any better at saying what he’s really feeling than Romana. “No, he would not admit it. But even I know that there is not possibly enough work on the portals to keep you busy at all hours of the day, especially with K9 helping. You _have_ been ignoring him.” _You_ have _been ignoring us._

“I — he can’t _regenerate_ , Leela. That isn’t the sort of thing you keep from the people you’re working with.”

“I thought you said you were not angry with him.”

“I’m not, I…” Romana runs a hand through her hair, exhaling in frustration. 

“You are worried about him.”

“I…” Romana sighs, long and low. “He can’t _regenerate_.”

“Neither can I.”

Something cracks in Romana’s expression, and she looks so lost that Leela’s breath catches in her throat. Before she has a chance to speak, Romana suddenly steps forward and hugs Leela close, burying her face in Leela’s shoulder. 

Leela makes a muffled noise of surprise. Romana has accepted her embraces on many occasions, understanding that holding another person and being held in return is a comfort to Leela, but she has never indicated that she needs or wants that same type of comfort in return. She has never hugged Leela like this, so quickly and desperately, like she’s afraid Leela will disappear. 

“I know,” Romana says. “I _know_. It would be so _easy_ for something to happen to either of you in any of these universes and Brax is already _gone_ and I’ve been so _careless_ , and it’s too dangerous — ”

“I am not _fragile_ , and neither is Narvin,” Leela murmurs, her arms tightening instinctively around Romana’s waist. “We have faced death many times before.” 

Romana lets out a muffled sob. “But now you’re — ” 

She cuts herself off, but Leela still hears the implied _all I have left_ and holds Romana tighter, stroking her hair. 

They stand there for a long moment, longer than Leela has been held in ages, and she’s grateful that Romana can’t seem to muster the willpower to step away again. Here, caught between worlds, the echoes of too many losses swimming around her, Leela doesn’t _want_ that distance. She wants this — Romana’s breath a slow exhale against her neck, Romana’s arms curled neatly around her back. It is so easy now to lose herself in heightened sensation — the brush of fingertips along her shoulder blades, the flutter of eyelashes against her neck, the tickle of hair along her collarbone — Leela swallows and sighs, eyes sliding shut. 

All it takes is Leela lifting her head slightly, and Romana pulls away, hands smoothing down her shirt for no reason except an excuse to look at her feet. A blush heats her face. 

_Time Lords._

Leela’s eyes flicker from the redness of Romana’s cheeks to the dark circles under her eyes. “You look like you have not slept these past few days.”

“I haven’t,” Romana admits. “Not really. I didn’t want to be caught sleeping if anything...went wrong.”

She could be talking about the security systems on the Axis or Narvin’s recovery or any number of _wrong_ things, but Leela chooses not to press her further. After all, she is also awake at this late hour, restless and wandering. 

These past few days her rest has been disturbed with more nightmares than usual. She can’t always remember them in the morning, and those are sometimes the worst ones — unknown visions that leave her with only a strange, aching feeling behind her breastbone, an absence she can’t explain. 

Leela slides her hand around Romana’s elbow once again and begins guiding her back down the hall in the direction of their rooms. “You should rest. I can stay awake, if you are worried — ”

“Leela, that really isn’t necessary. I need far less sleep than you do.”

“You do need _some_ sleep, even if it is only a little. The Axis will be fine. _Narvin_ will be fine.” _And if one of us can have a rest without interruption, maybe that is enough of a victory for tonight._

Romana chews her lower lip as they approach her bedroom door. Her weariness is obvious in the slump of her shoulders, but even as she opens the door with a longing look at the barely touched bed in the corner, she doesn’t step away. 

“I doubt I’ll be able to fall asleep, even if I tried.” And maybe because it is late and she looks as drained as Leela feels, Romana adds, “It’s not as if I ever slept well on Gallifrey, and now…”

It’s something they’ve never spoken about, not openly. But between Pandora slipping slowly into her mind, the chaos of the war, the Anomaly Vault creature, and the turbulence of Romana’s exile from the heart of Gallifrey, Romana has been restless for nearly as long as Leela has known her. And even looking back on her early days as Romana’s bodyguard, Leela suspects that the few times Romana insisted it was perfectly fine for her to fall asleep in Romana’s sitting room rather than trek back across the presidential palace at some late hour may have had to do with Romana’s own comfort as much as Leela’s. Threats, nightmares — they cannot be so easily dispelled, but there is a safety in knowing that someone else is sharing your space, someone else is there to protect you in the night.

Leela’s stomach catches in uncomfortable nostalgia, twisting at the now faded memories of her first home, the Sevateem huddled together at night, leaning on each other for comfort and security or simply for warmth when the night air blew cold. (More recent memories try to bubble to the surface — her and Andred’s shared bed, the peace of holding another person close after a long day, before everything went wrong — but she cuts them off swiftly.) 

Romana clears her throat. “I’ll take another look at the portal calculations. You get some rest, Leela, and I’ll — I’ll see you in the morning.”

She starts to slip inside the room, slip away — and that hungry nostalgic ache, that exhaustion that’s eating away at Leela’s bones, that certainty that something of the same pain is reflected in Romana’s eyes, it races up inside her, constricting her throat —

Leela catches Romana’s wrist. “Wait.”

Romana blinks at her. Leela softens her grasp.

“Could I.” She wets her lips. “Could I rest with you tonight?”

“I — ” A sharp intake of breath and Romana’s eyes widen. 

Leela braces herself for rejection. She is used to the discomfort of most Time Lords in sharing their physical spaces, sharing touch. Romana’s hug in the hallway was a rarity, and she can’t expect that she would be willing to open her sleeping space too. It was foolish of her to ask.

“Alright,” Romana says quietly. 

“Are you sure? I only thought that, perhaps...” _It would be easier, for both of us. It would be nice to feel that I am not alone on this strange, silent world._

“It’s fine.” Romana isn’t looking at her, and Leela’s chest tightens at the controlled detachment in her voice. But then Romana places her other hand on top of Leela’s, curling their fingers together for a moment. “I would like that.”

A weight lifts from Leela’s shoulders as she returns to her own room to change into something more comfortable, giving Romana space to prepare herself for sleep, too. When she knocks on Romana’s door, it opens to reveal her friend in a modest nightdress, similar to something Leela’s seen her wearing during their very late night or early morning conversations on Gallifrey. They don’t speak much as they settle in on Romana’s bed — it’s large enough for two, though only just.

Romana has curled up against the wall, and Leela stretches out on her back, staring blankly up at the dark ceiling before closing her eyes to soak in her other senses. The rustle of blankets as Romana shifts beside her, coiling and uncoiling her limbs. Her friend’s breathing — too loud and too uneven for falling asleep. The scratch of the blanket against her own skin, and the pang that she recognizes as an absence of sensation, a craving for the same kind of warmth she felt when Romana had pulled her close in the hallway. 

Leela reaches out across the space between them, her hand finding Romana’s. She doesn’t bother with pretense — an accidentally brushing of skin, a slow tangling of fingers. Romana doesn’t either, wrapping both of her hands instantly around Leela’s, cradling that point of connection in the curve of her body. 

Leela doesn’t know how long she spends awake or asleep that night, too aware of the brush of Romana’s shoulder or too lost in the gray, shifting world of dreams. It all jumbles together — she’s falling through darkness and she’s rolling over, her head lands naturally on Romana’s arm, Romana’s ankles tangle with hers and she’s drifting through an endless fog and time is uncertain around her.

When Leela wakes properly, it’s to a crack of light leaking in from under the door as the Axis resets for morning. Cool air tickles her feet where they stick out from under the blankets, and she stretches her arms above her head with a wide yawn, the mattress shifting underneath her. 

The other side of the bed is empty. 

That shouldn’t surprise her. Leela really does sleep longer than Romana, and it should be a good thing that she wasn’t woken by Romana leaving. And yet, staring at the space where Romana had curled up beside her last night, uncertain of when in the night or why exactly she left, Leela’s stomach sinks for more reasons than she cares to admit.

She buries her face in the pillow, throat closing against that same stillness and emptiness that has haunted this world, that has haunted _her_ world for so long. For once, she didn’t want to wake up alone. 

With a sigh, Leela slides out of bed and leaves for her own room. But as she steps out into the hallway, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, the murmur of low voices reaches her ears. The door to the medbay is cracked open at the end of the hall, just as it was last night.

Some of the ache in Leela’s chest eases as Romana and Narvin’s voices drift down the hall, too soft to make out any words but real and present all the same. Even though she can’t seem to untangle the loneliness around her own heart, the sense of fear and loss and drifting that has wrapped around her ever since — 

(Leela shoves that thought away because she has to move forward, keep searching, race out into each new world. If she stops, if she looks back at everything she has lost, it will all come crashing down around her.)

— it is a small comfort, as she begins her day, to hear something other than silence.


End file.
